by Dana Marton
His people specialized in revenge.
“IS HE OKAY?” GINA ASKED when she came to pick Carly up.
Carly closed her eyes for a moment, concerned and feeling guilty and scared, too. She hadn’t realized how much her sense of security had come to depend on Nick. She glanced up and down the street then got into the car, gave Gina an update on the way to work.
“You should have stayed home,” Anita said when they got there. “Sit down. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
The mothering felt good. Carly walked to the little kitchenette with the two women.
Sam was there already, staring out the window. “I think I’m in love.”
Gina snorted.
A second passed before Carly figured out what they were looking at. There was a fancy hotel across the road. A half-naked man stood in one of the windows, stretching. He looked almost as good as Nick.
“What’s the matter?” Sam challenged Gina. “Don’t you believe in love at first sight?”
“Sure. Why not.” Gina shrugged. “As a matter of fact, I think this is the guy I’m gonna marry.” She pointed to the table at the Chinese business magazine that she’d picked up in the bank’s lobby the other night. She had ended up bringing it back with her and, as with most junk, it had eventually landed in the kitchen.
“Not bad,” Anita said and moved a plate of chocolate-chip cookies out of the way to have a better look. She brought in baked goods from time to time—a streak of domesticity Carly couldn’t relate to. “He’s got that British aristocracy thing going. Who is it?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I learn Chinese. It’s at the very top of my to-do list,” Gina said.
Sam turned away from the window. “He’s gone. I waved, but I don’t think he saw me.”
“Now is not the time for a romantic entanglement,” Anita said.
The truth in her words made Carly wince.
“So how are you?” Sam asked and pushed the plate of cookies her way.
“The average American eats thirty-five thousand cookies in his or her lifetime,” Carly remarked absentmindedly. “Any doughnuts left from yesterday?”
Gina drew up an eyebrow. “Right. Like we don’t know who ate the last one.”
The phone rang. Sam walked out to the reception desk to answer it. Carly leaned back in her chair, wondering if she’d done the right thing by coming in. She had considered staying home and keeping an eye on Nick, but then the doctor Brant Law had arranged for had arrived to take a look at him and she’d been politely ushered out. There was nothing she could do there.
And she did have some news for the women. “Law and Moretti are getting nervous,” she said.
Gina raised her head. “How nervous?”
“They don’t want a body count.” Nick and Law had had a lengthy phone conversation about that. “We’re nowhere near Tsernyakov and are seeing plenty of heat already. They worry that whoever is after me might be connected to T.”
“They want to pull the plug,” Gina said.
Carly nodded. She’d been in a panic over it all morning. She didn’t want to quit the mission. She didn’t want to go back to the can. And she no longer wanted to go on the run either. She fit in here, she realized now that it was maybe too late. She fit the work, the mental and physical challenge, even the motley team, Nick, the mission. “He gave us three days to figure out whether or not this guy is connected to Tsernyakov.”
Sam hung up the phone and brought the pink slip she’d been scribbling on into the kitchenette. “What? You’re all looking funny.”
“We have three days to figure out who is after Carly or the deal is off,” Gina said.
Sam swore, then winced. “Sorry.” She was trying hard to develop a professional demeanor.
“Forget it.” Gina shrugged. “That’s what we’ve been thinking.”
Sam nodded and handed the note to Anita. “Granov wants a meeting with you sometime this week.” She added, “If we’re still here.”
Anita folded the note and pushed it into her pocket. “Thanks. I’ll look at my calendar and call him back.” Then she went still. “Oh my God, I know where I saw that guy.”
“Our guy?” Gina asked.
“Yes. I saw him at Granov’s office. He was coming out as I was going in and almost knocked me over with the door. He seemed to be in a temper.”
Hope and excitement washed over Carly. They had him.
Gina’s eyes narrowed. “Where did we get Granov from?”
“He’d been Costa-Costa, Inc.’s client before Brant busted them,” Carly said, remembering the name from the very first client list she’d been able to uncover.
“Does this Granov have any reason to be mad at us?” Gina leaned against the counter.
Anita shook her head. “I’ve just trickled a million Euros through a half-dozen accounts for him so he can use it without anyone being able to track it to its unsavory source. He already asked for help with another chunk of change he’s got coming in. He seemed very pleased with the work that we do.”
Sam cleared her throat and looked behind Carly. Anita turned and her lips stretched into a smile. “Hi. Can I help you?”
Carly twisted around on the chair in time to see the glass front doors swing shut behind two police officers who were now walking in their direction—Hoffman and Mayen.
“Good morning, ladies. Would you mind if we asked you a few questions? Miss Jones probably told you about this morning’s incident on the beach.” Mayen’s smile showed his coffee-stained teeth.
“Have you found anything?” Anita asked.
“Unfortunately, not yet. But maybe you can help us.” Officer Hoffman stepped forward, open suspicion on his pudgy face as he looked around the office.
“Of course,” Anita said. “We’ll be happy to help any way we can.”
Hoffman nodded. “We’d like to talk to you each separately in your offices.”
“No problem.” Gina flashed a smile of pure innocence, so out of character it made Carly do a double take.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Sam asked, perhaps stalling for time.
“Thank you, that would be great.” Officer Mayen stepped back.
“One for me, too, please,” Hoffman said. “I’ll be in Miss Caballo’s office.”
Mayen followed Gina to her desk. Both men let the woman go in first then closed the door behind them. Sam and Carly exchanged looks.
“Are we in trouble?” Sam kept her voice low.
“I don’t know. But we need to keep acting as if we’re not.” She helped Sam make the coffees and went back to her desk when Sam took the tray to the men.
Cops are here again.
She zapped the message to Nick over e-mail, although she didn’t think he was in any shape to be sitting at his computer.
But the response came almost instantly. Do you need help?
She responded. It’s okay so far. Anita remembered where she saw the guy on the sketch. He’d been to Granov. Granov used to be a client at Costa-Costa.
I’ll get right on it. Be careful. Stay safe.
Carly stared at the message. The local cops were investigating their office. And some guy, connected to one of their clients, had taken three pretty good stabs at taking her out. Things were getting serious.
Okay. She typed in the single word. No worries. They could handle it.
Anita was coming out of her office and walked over to Sam. “Your turn.” And when Sam walked hesitantly to meet with Officer Hoffman, Anita came over to Carly.
“How was it?”
“Not too good.” Anita sat in the chair on the other side of Carly’s desk. “They’re wondering if there is a connection between the shooting in the street in front of our building and the car bomb.”
They so didn’t need this. Carly shook her head. “I told Nick you remembered that guy.”
“He’ll protect you,” Anita said, but turned a shade paler. “It’s getting to be a little more than we bargained for, isn’t it
? I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Having someone care about her on a personal level seemed strange and new and not altogether unpleasant. It would be nice to have a friend. “Thanks,” she said. “Same here.”
Carly relaxed back into her seat, flipped through the open windows on her PC, settled on one of the message boards where she’d posted her questions about the possibility of someone tracking back her entry into a system. A private message was waiting for her. She clicked to open it.
The note came from “PalikKovaszka,” one of the respected gurus of the hacker universe.
It’s been done. Friends and I put something together for a client recently who was attacked by some wacko cracker. Here is a link to code. Feel free to take for personal use.
She followed the link and read through the program, more awed with each line. Brilliant. The code was a thing of beauty. She was so excited about having it, she forgot to be mad about the fact that it could have very well led some murdering maniac to her door. When you were a hacker, there were no mistakes, only learning opportunities.
She looked through their suspect list. Bingo. Just like that, everything fell into place.
“Here is your tea.” Anita came through the door, holding a large cup with the Cayman Islands Tourist Board logo on it.
“I know who’s after me.” Carly took the cup and blew on the hot amber liquid.
Anita’s black eyebrows slid up her smooth forehead.
“Sal Ettori. He was a security guard at Costa-Costa. They realized there had been a breach when I’d broken into their mainframe and was smart enough to get help, tracked the hack back to my IP address. My guess is that someone at the company gave Ettori the order to take me out. The company heads went down when the FBI arrested them for money laundering, but lower-level employees walked free.”
“How does he connect with the bank?”
“After his employment with Costa-Costa ended, he got a job at the security company that works on contract for Banca Internationale. Did you see Ettori at Granov’s office before or after the FBI crack-down?”
“Before.”
“Makes sense. The client was leaving. Costa-Costa might have sent Ettori to strong-arm them or blackmail them into staying.”
She was typing an e-mail even as she spoke. I have a name, Sal Ettori. Currently works for CaySec. She sent it to Nick.
I’ll make sure he’s taken care of, came the instant reply.
Mayen was coming out of Gina’s office and headed toward Carly’s.
“Better go.” Anita took off.
Mayen came in and closed the door behind him, then sat in the chair on the other side of Carly’s desk. “Your coworkers don’t seem to have any idea why someone would want to harm you. Everyone thinks you are a woman with no enemies.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I barely know anyone here anyway. I’m pretty new to the island.”
“How about your coworkers?”
“We get along.”
The man didn’t look convinced. “Ex-boyfriends?”
“Too many to single anyone out,” she lied with a coy smile.
“Any relationships that ended badly?”
“No. I’m pretty easy-going. I suppose I attract the same kind. When it stops being fun, we move on. No hard feelings.”
“You don’t seem to be too shook up.”
She took a long breath. “I was. Then I figured it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with me. They either mixed my car up with someone else’s or it was a random attack, somebody out there looking to make trouble for no reason than to entertain himself.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he nodded in agreement. “Might even have been a distraction. Somebody knocked off a jewelry store on Reef Boulevard about the same time.”
“That had to be it.” Carly perked up. “Wow, this is like some movie. You do this every day?” She batted her lashes with admiration.
“Unfortunately,” Mayen said as he stood, not looking the least bit impressed by her display of feminine admiration. He put a business card on her desk.
“I already have one from last time.”
“For back up,” he said. “You call me if you remember anything. I’m still not convinced that the bomb isn’t connected to that shooting in front of this building a few days ago.”
He walked out of Carly’s office as Hoffman finished with Sam. They said a cordial goodbye before they left.
“How did it go?” Anita asked.
“They have nothing on us. Did he tell you about the jewelry robbery?”
Anita and Sam shook their heads. Gina nodded and filled them in. “We could have paid off Mayen to go away and never come back,” she said afterward.
“How do you know?” Carly asked.
“I know a crooked cop when I see one. And he hinted, too. For some reason he pegged me for the one he could level with. I didn’t have the stomach for it.”
“Let’s hope we’re okay for now,” Sam said, looking out of sorts. It seemed as though having to deal with cops made her a little shaky.
“Looks like it.” Gina headed for the kitchen.
“Carly figured out who attacked her,” Anita announced as she followed Gina.
Carly and Sam went after them. At one point in the last couple of days, the kitchen had become their war room where they gathered to talk and strategize.
“Good,” Gina was saying. “Now Nick can nab this guy and you can be safe.”
“We’ve all been worried about you,” Anita said.
And as Carly looked around, she realized Anita was speaking the truth.
For the first time in a long time, it seemed people cared about her, that she was part of something. It felt odd and unexpected, and the thought somehow lodged in her throat so she had trouble getting even two short words past it. “Thank you.”
“From now on, we’ll stick as close to you as possible,” Gina added.
And there it was, that funny knot in her throat again. She nodded and started back toward her office.
“How badly is Nick injured?” Anita asked. “You think he can get this guy in three days?”
She thought about that. He was an impressively strong man; the temptation was there to leave everything to him. “It’s our job, too. Our mission.”
Sam nodded. “So what do we do?”
“We set the guy up,” Gina said.
“LOOKS LIKE YOU’VE BEEN someplace sunny,” Tsernyakov clinked his glass against his guest’s and threw back the shot of vodka. It burned his throat pleasantly all the way down.
He was in a good mood. He’d just had a phone conference with his mother’s physician. Her health was finally improving. He’d certainly paid enough for them to go above and beyond.
“Caribbean. Taking care of business,” his guest said and sipped his drink, a deplorable treatment for good vodka, but since he was French, he was forgiven. He preferred bourbon, but was used to Tsernyakov’s certain eccentricities like his regular shot of vodka each day before breakfast.
“Help yourself.” Tsernyakov gestured toward the middle of the table where the maid had left their hearty breakfast before leaving the room and closing the door behind her to allow the two men privacy.
He piled eggs and fried sausage on his own plate while the other man took a slice of toast and scraped some butter over it. He was one of a handful of people, outside of those who provided immediate services like the maids and drivers, who knew the real Tsernyakov. They went back forty years.
“So how is business?” Tsernyakov asked.
“Costa-Costa went under.” His guest spread some gooseberry jam over the butter.
“You had money with them?” Tsernyakov didn’t mention that he’d already heard the news. He didn’t mind listening to the same story from different people; they tended to give different details, leaving him with a more complete picture.
“Some.” The man bit into his toast. He didn’t seem upset. “The FBI took them down.”
“I see.”
“I have to take what business I had with them someplace else. There’s a new company in town, Savall, Ltd. Americans.”
This he hadn’t heard. “Anybody I know?” The same people tended to switch businesses over and over again to keep one step ahead of the law. You’d bankrupt one, shut it down, start another nice and fresh.
He drank his tea, then put down the cup. “They’re new. Four women. Beautiful.”
Tsernyakov liked the sound of that. “They’ll succeed if they’re any good at what they do.”
“I was hoping you could help me out with background checks.”
“You can e-mail the names to my secretary.”
“Thank you.”
“Anything I should know about them before I ask around?”
His guest shrugged. “They might have had something to do with Costa-Costa going down. The old man swears that one of the women hacked into their system to steal his clients. He thinks they reported him to the FBI to get rid of the competition.”
Tsernyakov chewed his sausage and could have moaned as the spices exploded on his tongue. His cook deserved a raise.
“The FBI raid came too quick on the heel of the breach of their system security.”
“Maybe,” Tsernyakov said, not mentioning that he’d known for months that the FBI was keeping an eye on Costa-Costa. Exactly why he hadn’t done any business with them lately.
“So the old man, you know how he is, gets one of his men to go after the woman they thought broke into his computers.”
“Did he get her?”
“Not so far.”
“What about his sons?”
“In jail. Both of them. The father wasn’t officially listed on the business papers so he lucked out.”
“That’s rough,” he said, although he didn’t particularly like old Costa. But losing the family business and having both sons in jail—it had to be hard on the man.
“How are things here?” His friend was done with his toast and leaned back in his chair.
“So far so good.” The thought of last night’s developments took his mind off old Costa and put a smile on his face. He had found a couple of scientists he’d worked with before who were willing. All he had to do was set up a secure lab.
